Naruto: The Scientific Ninja

Chapter 30: Poison Collection

Swish…

Sasuke and his three subordinates leaped through the giant trees, making their way back to their own defense zone.

"Captain, we finally had a chance to connect with Lord Torifune and his team. Why were you in such a hurry to get back?" Tekudō asked, bewildered.

Born into a family of blade merchants, Tekudō had a natural understanding of networking and social etiquette. His captain's abnormal behavior had just cost them a golden opportunity to build a relationship with a high-ranking ninja from the Akimichi clan.

"Didn't I say? We need to get back to our patrol, quickly," Sasuke said irritably, giving Tekudō a light smack on the back of the head that nearly knocked him off the branch.

The truth was, he was in a hurry to get away. He had used too much chakra to stimulate his tear ducts, and now his eyes wouldn't stop watering. If he had stayed any longer, his act would have been exposed, and the embarrassment would have been unbearable.

"You three head back to the patrol area first," he said, changing the subject. "I'm going to resupply."

"Captain, no!" Tekudō protested. "What if the Sand ninja choose our defense zone to attack?"

"Don't worry, Shibi has released plenty of his kikaichū in our area. There won't be any danger," Sasuke said, placating them. He gave a few more instructions, handed over the trophy scroll, and then leaped away, flying through the trees toward the rear of the defense zone.

After running for five kilometers, he doubled back for another two, finally arriving at the base of a slightly hollow giant tree. After using his sonar radar to ensure there were no ninja or Aburame parasite insects nearby, he climbed the tree and slipped into a hidden hole.

The hole led down into a narrow, hollow passage that opened into a spacious chamber at the base of the tree, about the size of a living room. The moment he entered, he was greeted by the chittering sounds of a large number of water bats. This was one of his secret labs. Without the Earth Release technique, finding such a hidden cave on the front lines was a rarity.

It was less of a laboratory and more of a bat-breeding farm. In the center was a simple wooden workbench with a set of dissection tools, three iron cages containing water bats, and a dozen bottles of saline solution. Soaking in the saline weren't Sharingan or Hashirama cells, but the internal organs of low-level summoned beasts, mostly water bats.

He glanced at the three bats in the cages. They were still alive and well. He took a saline bottle from the table and placed the bisected body of his own summoned bat inside, preserving it for later research.

"They say Sand ninja puppets are very valuable. I wonder how much I can sell these for," he mused, untying the trophy scroll and sorting through his harvest.

Aside from the well-preserved, chūnin-level Black Ant puppet, the other three were heavily damaged. The spare special jōnin puppet was practically scrap metal, but the one cut in two by his Fūma shuriken was a rare Red Scorpion model and seemed quite expensive, its parts relatively intact.

"I'll keep this Red Scorpion puppet," he decided. He packed the other three broken puppets and their parts back into the scroll.

After processing the puppets, he moved to the other end of the cave, opened a wire mesh, and carefully slipped into a smaller, adjoining chamber. The stone walls of this cave were covered with a dense colony of water bats. Most were ordinary, but about a hundred of them had faint chakra fluctuations. The moment he entered, they swarmed him. He quickly unsealed a scroll, and a large quantity of freshwater fish spilled onto the floor. The bats descended upon the fish like locusts.

Sasuke grabbed one of the larger fish, retreated, and sealed the entrance behind him. The sound of the swarm banging against the mesh and wooden frame lasted for more than ten minutes before it finally fell silent. Inside, the bats had been knocked unconscious by the poison on the fish.

"Their poison resistance has strengthened again," Sasuke noted, observing the unconscious bats. This chakra-filled world is truly irrational.

He quickly found all the bats that had chakra fluctuations, took out his tools, extracted their venom, and packed it away. In the end, he had collected nearly 500 ml of his new concoction: Water Bat No. 7.